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Carter, Gore, now Obama – it’s hard to take the Nobel Peace Prize seriously. Yes, hope is a virtue: life without it is impoverished. But it’s a relatively easy virtue, compared with accomplishment. And it’s a hollow virtue when based on no or, even worse, mistaken foundations.

To date, Obama has been all talk. And to realists, that talk, far from giving hope, has given fear. Exhibit A is Obama’s dream of a nuclear-free world, which “peace folks” fall for every time. Does Obama not realize that MAD, “mutual assured destruction,” preserved the peace during the long Cold War? That policy gave hope because it was based in reality – on a sober understanding of how the world works – not on some storybook vision of human goodness. Thus far Obama’s vision has produced nothing – except the Nobel Peace Prize. Let’s remember that Woodrow Wilson was awarded that prize too, even though his actions sowed the seeds of the greatest war in human history.

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